EVGA products are very well-known not only outside California, where the company head-quarters are, but also outside the United States. The first things we think of are EVGA graphics cards, of course, but they have also been selling EVGA branded mainboards for a few years now. Until recently all EVGA mainboards have been based on Nvidia chipsets, because EVGA Corporation is one of Nvidia’s primary partners. Now, however, EVGA started offering mainboards on Intel chipsets for the first time. The reasons behind this decision are pretty obvious to everyone: Nvidia doesn’t have any chipsets supporting the new generation Intel processors because of some licensing issues. Moreover, there is no certainty that these chipsets will come in the near or even far away future. Intel X58 Express is currently the only core logic set supporting Intel Core i7 processors that is why it is absolutely natural that EVGA started launching mainboards based on this chipset.

It is no secret that many graphics cards and mainboards based on Nvidia chips use reference design. The only way to distinguish between the solutions from different makers is by the package design, brand name sticker and accessories bundle inside. Therefore, it is extremely interesting to see how successful EVGA’s own proprietary design turned out and what functionality their new mainboard has to offer. We decided to start with the top mainboard in the new family – the EVGA X58 SLI Classified.